This week, Projeto BIRA concluded the first leg of its six state tour and results were jubilantly above prior expectations.  We just arrived from Bailique, an archipelago in the Amazon river delta-12 hours by boat from Macapa. There, we visited two communities where we stayed in the houses of locals. We were treated to a cuisine that included buckets of shrimp, cooked capivara, and lots and lots of new games, songs and homemade toys such as little airplanes, miriti boats, “taboca” toy rifles, buçu tops, wooden stilts shaped with machetes, and much more.

The children here have an enviable cultural repertory. It was difficult to find songs or games they didn’t know in order to establish a cultural exchange. However, the most valuable things I could give were stories. I exhausted my repetoire visiting the miriti-palm-roof houses, gathering people, young and old, that hung on every word of each story I told.

We met a 13-year-old girl named Keliane who helped us with her impressive practical knowledge about children’s culture in Bailique. Watching her jump elastic or playing bole-bole (a version of jacks played with flat rocks) is a rare cultural spectacle, and it was all meticulously recorded in David’s camera. (He’s now better known as “homen branco” (white guy) amongst the kids.

Favorite games within this group of “giitos” (that’s northern slang for “littl'uns”) include hand pachem games like “Do, ray, me, fa”, “Dona Cabante Utelo”, and “Aranha Carangageiro”. Then there are the circle games like “Dança da Carocinha”, “Fui na Espanha”, and “Tanta Laranja”, and of course activities like Capture the Flag, Hopscotch and string figures. Still to mention are the “rabiolas” (homemade kites) that dot the sky by the river and who can forget the vital, delicious swim.

We spent our days encircled by little eyes eager to demonstrate their abilities, eyes that would then head for the jungle in search of the raw materials necessary to make their toys, little eyes eager to row us around in the family canoe, and little eyes that would masterfully throw circular nets in the river only to pull them back full of scrumptious shrimp.

We left Bailique with sadness apparent both on the riverbank and in the boat, but with the sensation that from now on we would maintain a deep camaraderie with the little ones that come from a territory where the human connection is equivalent to the richness of the jungle that surrounds it.